PV GRID-PARITY FOR THE NEXT DECADE IN BRAZIL AND THE NEED OF AN INCENTIVE PROGRAM

Abstract

According to the foreseen difficulties regarding to the Brazilian future energy supply in the next years, mainly due to the accelerated growth of the demand and the future perspectives of the electric energy offer, the necessity of including new sources of energy become an important issue, to diversify the energy mix. Photovoltaic (PV) power as a complementary source of energy would be helping the supply of this market, in a sustainable way. Although the country have a great potential for the application of this renewable source (RE) and have high levels of solar irradiation, the role that PV energy plays in the Brazilian market is still quite small. The current legislation, responsible for ruling the energy production, transmission and distribution, does not take into account incentives for grid-connected PV systems. The high costs regarding to the implementation of these systems and the paradigm of this RE being expensive and being viable only for applications in developed countries, are the basic reasons to justify not exploiting this source. The aim of this article is to show, through a grid-parity analysis between PV energy costs and conventional energy tariffs, that in the next decade the energy PV price will be competitive with the conventional energy price, even without a governmental program stimulating this RE. Nevertheless, this work emphasizes the need of a support program, so that the necessary experience to dominate the market, in a big scale, can take place in an orderly way and with the most benefit, when the grid-parity is reached. Based on the German government experiences, this paper suggests the development of a feed-in program similar to the German one, with some adaptations that take into account the socio- economic Brazilian reality. In that way, it will lead to the cumulative production, reducing costs and making viable the implementation of grid connected PV systems in Brazil.